


12 Secrets You Never Thought You'd Get to Learn About the Avengers

by iam93percentstardust



Series: Phoenix on Your Wrist [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Because it's written as a blog post, Blogging, Experimental Style, Fluff, M/M, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26921125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iam93percentstardust/pseuds/iam93percentstardust
Summary: Natasha finishes reading the last sentence and smiles just a little, letting her gaze travel over her family—and theyareher family, she doesn’t need an article to tell her that, but it’s still nice to see it spelled out for everyone to read.
Relationships: Avengers Team & Original Female Character(s), James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Phoenix on Your Wrist [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964239
Comments: 15
Kudos: 182





	12 Secrets You Never Thought You'd Get to Learn About the Avengers

“Tony, doll?” Bucky asks, poking his head into the workshop. “Remember that time about a month ago when we had a blogger visit the tower for a week?”

Tony rolls himself out from underneath the Roadster and glares at him. “Vividly,” he replies flatly and Bucky remembers that they’d almost gotten caught fucking in the kitchen when she wandered in for a midnight snack. They’d had to have the team’s PR experts step in to make sure she wouldn’t publish anything about their sex lives—though considering the amount of surprisingly accurate speculation that’s popped up about them, he’s starting to wonder if maybe she’s made some vague comments on other platforms that they hadn’t caught. Well, whatever, as long as she’s not explicit about it, he doesn’t care what they think their sex lives are like.

It’s not like Bucky himself hasn’t said worse. In front of an audience. On live TV.

Fuck but that was embarrassing.

“Her article’s out. The whole team’s gonna sit down and read it together, you want to join us?”

“Fuck yes,” Tony says and scrambles up from the roller. Bucky tosses him a rag to wipe off the worst of the grease and Tony smiles brilliantly at him. “Thanks, babe.”

* * *

_Twelve Secrets You Never Thought You’d Get to Learn about the Avengers_

**Article by Adja Faye**

If you had told me two months ago that I would get to spend an entire week living inside the very exclusive, very secretive Avengers Tower, I would have squealed loudly and then laughed you off. Really? Me? In Avengers Tower? Get out of here. But that’s exactly what I got to do just last month after I found out from the Avengers’ PR team that I had been selected to spend time getting to know the team.

You might be asking, “Why a blogger?” I wouldn’t blame you. _I_ certainly did. But when you start thinking about Tony Stark’s long, storied past with the press, it’s pretty easy to guess why they turned to blogs instead.

So then you might be wondering, “Why Adja?” And to be honest, I still don’t blame you. I made no secret of the fact that when Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes were searching for their third, I emphatically didn’t think that Tony Stark was it even though he was a popular (and correct, as it turns out) guess. Truthfully, I still don’t know why they selected me over literally anyone else but if I had to make a guess, I’d say it’s _because_ I was so anti-Stuckony, as their fans have dubbed them. The Avengers aren’t a group that likes to surround itself with sycophants and I think maybe they thought I would present an honest, unbiased opinion.

But honestly, after spending a week with them, after seeing the way the team acts with each other and the way America’s favorite threesome interacts, I have just one thing to say:

There’s no one else I’d trust more to save the world.

But that’s not what you came here to read, now is it? You came here for the clickbaity title. Trust me, I would too. So here it is, without further ado, the twelve secrets you never thought you’d get to learn about the Avengers.

_1\. Maria Hill is as much a part of the team as anyone else._

To the casual observer, Maria Hill, once of SHIELD, is just the assistant for current leader of the team—Colonel James Rhodes, at the moment. She’s the one who gives him information about upcoming missions, she makes sure the team is ready and on time for any appearances they’re making, and she sorts through the fan mail (once it’s been vetted) to make sure it goes to the right Avenger.

But she’s more than just an assistant.

On my second day in the tower, the team got called out for a mission. I’d been in the middle of an interview with Natasha Romanoff, the infamous Black Widow, and definitely wasn’t expecting Jarvis, Tony Stark’s version of Siri, to announce that there was a mission and she needed to suit up. I’ll be the first to admit that I was fully anticipating a klaxon and flashing lights but it was surprisingly quiet. She deposited me with Agent Hill, who I was expecting to tell me to go back to my room and wait for the mission to be over.

To my surprise, she invited me into the control room, run by several team members and personally overseen by Agent Hill herself. I can’t give any details of the mission itself but getting to watch Agent Hill in what I suspect is her element was a real treat and completely convinced me that she’s as necessary to the team as everyone else.

_2\. Sharon Carter grew up with Tony Stark._

We’ve all heard of the Captain America radio drama and Betty Carver, the beautiful nurse often taken hostage by the Nazis for the plot and revealed to be Captain America’s soulmate in the final episode. By now, we know that the soulmate part was pure speculation as even back then, Steve Rogers knew his soulmate was Bucky Barnes but what you might not have known was that Betty Carver, reimagined into an intrepid female pilot for the early 1990s cartoon _Captain America and the Howling Commandos,_ was inspired by real life secret agent and founder of SHIELD, Peggy Carter.

Agent Carter’s life reads like an adventure novel if you had the chance to read her SHIELD file when it was leaked during the Battle of the Potomac and if you didn’t, just imagine the most badass lady you can think of and multiple it by 1000. That’s Agent Carter. But she, of course, had a life after WWII and that life includes being the godmother to Tony Stark and the aunt to one Sharon Carter.

Sharon, as she insists on being called, was a SHIELD agent herself until the fall of SHIELD at which point she transferred to the CIA. These days, she’s still a part-time CIA agent and the rest of the time, she works with the Avengers.

“Growing up with Tony,” she told me one night, “was like growing up with Brad Pitt as your cousin. He was always surrounded by the press, always busy, and you could never forget that he was more famous than you.” She shrugged. “But I love him.”

And no one can deny that the two are very fond of each other. Sharon and Tony can frequently be found together working on one of his projects or studying her case files. I can’t imagine what it must have been like knowing a young Tony Stark. We’ve all heard the stories of wild parties and orgies but honestly, I think it might have been something like what I saw on the last day I was there—Sharon sitting on the floor in front of Tony as he brushes her hair while she reads him _The Hobbit._

_3\. Sam Wilson can kick anyone’s ass in a prank war._

Yeah, you read that right.

The Avengers have prank wars and high-stakes ones too. The winner doesn’t have to do paperwork for a month, which apparently means a lot in a superhero team. I arrived at the very tail end of one, during which Clint Barton woke up with bright pink hair one morning, Sharon’s Instagram account posted nothing but chinchilla pictures for three days, and Jarvis spoke in nothing but limericks for an hour before Tony rebooted his code. And apparently, all of these pranks can be tied back to Sam, who is the reigning king of the tower prank wars.

I asked him once if he’d be willing to divulge any of his secrets and he just laughed at me. “I could tell you in the vaguest possible terms and Clint would still figure out what I meant, so no,” he informed me.

Perhaps most intriguingly is how most of his pranks seem to have either Bucky or Clint as their victims. “It’s a friendly rivalry,” Clint told me. “A bird thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

Well that definitely describes the relationship between the Falcon and Hawkeye but at first, it doesn’t quite manage to describe Bucky, who just laughed when I mentioned it to him. “Sure it does,” he said. “My soulmark is a phoenix. That’s a bird, isn’t it?”

I think there might be more to it than that but that’s all any of them are willing to tell me about their prank wars and I guess I’ll have to accept that. Can’t be privy to all of their secrets, right?

_4\. Thor knows more about science than you do._

It’s easy to think that Thor, so passionately exuberant about all things Earth and human, doesn’t understand as much as we do, especially when you consider that the Vikings stories about the Asgardians are a thousand years old. But then you also have to take into consideration the fact that the Asgardians are a race which invented a method of inter-galactic travel several thousand years before we even knew that aliens existed.

The very first time I met Thor, he was playing Mario Kart with Clint and I remember thinking, _Yeah, that tracks_. But then I went down for dinner that night—and yes, the Avengers do have team dinners—and there he was, talking to Tony about thermonuclear physics without even batting an eye—and that’s something that team thinks is _normal_. In fact, it’s so normal that Natasha throws a dinner roll at them and reminds them that they have a rule about no science talk at the table.

It was pretty startling. You’d expect that the people talking about science would be, well, the two scientists. Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Bruce Banner definitely talks about science a lot but to hear Thor so casually discussing something that even a lot of academics wouldn’t understand was definitely a wakeup call. I won’t be so quick to underestimate him the next time he waxes poetic about Poptarts for ten minutes during an interview.

_5\. Dr. Bruce Banner watches cartoons when he’s Hulked out._

I only saw the Hulk once during my visit. Apparently, Dr. Banner has excellent control over his alter ego because he rarely appears unless he’s called out for missions. Still, even Dr. Banner can lose his temper when he drops a carton of eggs and so I got to meet the tower’s Jolly Green Giant (I can practically hear Tony, who’s never met a pop culture reference he didn’t love, applauding me proudly). I don’t really know what I was expecting out of the Hulk but it definitely wasn’t him grumbling loudly about the eggs as he stomped downstairs to what Natasha later informed me was his own floor.

“But what does he _do_ while he’s the Hulk?” I asked her.

“Watches Studio Ghibli movies mostly.”

For anyone wondering, the Hulk’s favorite Ghibli movie is _Kiki’s Delivery Service._ Dr. Banner prefers _Howl’s Moving Castle._

_6\. Clint Barton divides his time between the tower and his family._

Who apparently live in an undisclosed location.

Seriously.

There’s not even a paper trail that indicates where they live.

I know he has three kids and a wife because I’ve seen pictures of them and because Tony asked what the oldest kid wants for her birthday this year (a specially made Stark archery set because she’s just like her father) but that’s the most I know about them. Still, kind of surprising, isn’t it?

_7\. Natasha Romanoff is trained as a classical ballerina._

She doesn’t let me ask any questions about her training, where she was trained, or why she was trained but on my fifth day in the tower, Natasha wakes me up early to bring me downstairs to one of the gyms (yes, that’s right, _one of them_ ) where she stretches for about thirty minutes and then turns on what I recognize as a song from _The Nutcracker_.

I did ballet when I was younger, just like a lot of little girls, but I could never do the things she’s doing. Really, she’s incredibly talented and if you ever have the chance to watch her dance, I highly recommend you take the opportunity. For an hour and a half, I watched her and the most I can say about how I felt was sheer awe (her jumps are a thing of beauty).

_8\. Colonel James Rhodes went to MIT._

I know a lot of people think that Colonel Rhodes, affectionately called Rhodey by almost everyone who knows him, wunderkind of the Air Force and on the fast track to promotion, went to one of the service academies for college. But nope! He actually attended MIT, which incidentally is where he met Tony, and he is a bonafide rocket scientist with a double major in Physics and Mechanical Engineering.

According to Tony, Colonel Rhodes is the reason he’s still alive today as Rhodey kept him fed and warm. “We ended up getting paired together in a dorm room for our freshman year,” Rhodey told me. He chuckled. “I think that might have been the biggest mistake the college ever made. We got along like a house on fire, literally. We accidentally set fire to the dorm twice just in the first month of living there. By Christmas, we were politely informed not to come back so we ended up getting an apartment together. We’ve been friends ever since.”

When I asked him about his studies, Colonel Rhodes had this to say: “I use my degree more often than you’d think. I was uniquely suited to the position of Stark Industries’ liaison and that’s where I spent a lot of my career. Tony doesn’t suffer fools. If you can’t keep up, then he’ll just steamroll over you so I ended up really putting my degree to good use.”

Speaking of Tony Stark, here’s the section you’ve really been waiting for: secrets about America’s most famous soulmates.

_9\. Tony Stark is a total cuddleslut._

Yeah, you read _that_ right too.

For starters, let me set the scene. It’s about mid-morning, getting on toward lunch, on my third day and I’m talking to Bucky in the team’s common room about his experience as a Howling Commando. Steve is in the kitchen, fixing lunch for the three of us, and most of the rest of the team is out of the tower for various reasons.

There’s a garbled sound from the hallway and then Tony Stark, who spent the last twelve hours crashed from a workshop binge—apparently where he can usually be found, staggers out of the elevator in what looks like one of his soulmate’s clothes, across the floor, and flops into Bucky’s lap, pushing his head into Bucky’s hand like a needy cat.

To my undying amusement, Bucky just chuckles and scratches his head and I’ll swear to anything you like that the lights got a little bit brighter. There’s been a lot of discussion about possible side effects that Hydra’s experiments had on Tony—let me tell you, it’s just as weird in person as it is in pictures seeing him look almost two decades younger than he is—and the team still refuses to confirm anything but I have my money on technomancer.

_10\. Bucky Barnes killed JFK._

Just kidding!

_10 (for real this time). Bucky Barnes can hustle anyone at pool._

This one seems like a no-brainer. Bucky was the sniper for the Howling Commandos during the war and it’s no secret that his work as the Winter Soldier was largely as a sniper as well. But it’s still beyond surprising to watch him completely kick ass at pool. One of the nights I was there, the team held a pool tournament, one of those bonding activities that they apparently have scheduled nights for.

I’ll be honest, I was expecting Tony to win or maybe Rhodey or maybe even Steve (we’ve all seen him with that shield). I wasn’t expecting Steve to interrupt Natasha as she’s dividing up the pools and tell her that Bucky has to play last or for Natasha to consider Bucky for a moment and then agree without arguing.

And boy, can the man play pool. I’ve never thought of playing pool as foreplay before but I promise you, there’s no other word to describe what happened. By the end of the night, even I wasn’t surprised when Tony all but jumped Bucky’s bones as he beat out Steve in the last match.

_11\. Steve Rogers is one hell of an artist._

Did you guys know that Steve worked on newspaper comics before the war? Cause I didn’t.

There are sketchbooks scattered all over the tower and at first, I didn’t know who they belonged to but I’m not an investigative blogger for nothing! (Just kidding, I’m not an investigative blogger) So of course, I open one and wouldn’t you know it, the pages are _covered_ in sketches of the team, both individual and group, and even more, there are these incredibly detailed drawings of Bucky and Tony, which right there is enough to tell me who the artist probably is but that’s when Clint caught me looking at the sketchbook and said, “Yeah, those are Steve’s.”

So there’s my confirmation. Steve Rogers really is an incredible artist. And apparently, he does a lot of the artwork for the tower, including a group piece of the Avengers out at dinner after a mission, which you can currently see in the lobby of the tower, hanging above the front desk. The lobby is open to the general public and you’ll get to see not one, not two, but _three_ of Steve’s artworks hanging in the lobby alongside other commissioned fanarts because apparently Tony believes in supporting the fans (see links to artists’ websites below the article).

And lastly:

_12\. The Avengers are the embodiment of the team as family trope._

The Avengers team has movie nights and game nights and team dinners. They go shopping together, attend events together, live, laugh, and love together. It’s the dream for those of us from the younger generations, the ability to live in a home with a group of friends and be happy for the rest of our days, and I’m so glad that I got the chance to peek behind the curtain and share a little bit about what I saw with all of you.

The Avengers are as much a family as they are a team and it’s so clear in every breath they take, every interaction they have with each other, that they really, truly love each other.

* * *

Natasha finishes reading the last sentence and smiles just a little, letting her gaze travel over her family—and they _are_ her family, she doesn’t need an article to tell her that, but it’s still nice to see it spelled out for everyone to read.

On one side of the room, Rhodey is snuggled up next to Pepper, who had specifically requested not to be mentioned in the post, and they’re both talking to Maria, probably about whether some of the things mentioned in the article need to be squashed though she doesn’t think that Clint’s family is that much of a secret. Clint is coming back from the kitchen with a cup of tea for Bruce and some popcorn for Thor, who had suggested earlier that they watch a movie after this. Sam and Bucky are playfully ribbing each other on the loveseat in the back corner, and there, on the big couch, Tony is sprawled across Sharon’s lap, feet resting on Steve’s so he can massage them.

She smiles again. Yeah, this is her family and she wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
